My understanding is that the menu system of the new tivos was nearly unbearably slow at the release. Is that still the case?

I've also heard that the interface is now saturated with ads? Is that right?

I'm also confused on the pricing. When I look at the upgrade offers all I see is the premier at $150 + lifetime at $500. That would mean they are asking $650 for the premiere. Is that the price for a version without ads? That seems ridiculously high.

The HD menus do lag. Thankfully you can turn them off and revert to the "classic" UI.

For now at least. The Premiere has gone the same as the S3, the Series 2 and Series 1 before - when I first got all of them, the overall experience was zippy and generally lag free. Then with each successive software update, the boxes get slower and slower. It happened with my original Phillips S1, my S2 and S3. By the time I got my HD it had already had a few software updates, so if it was zippy on release I never saw it.

At least the premiere was slow from day one!

As I said, at least you can kill the HD UI. It should be comparable to your S2 (despite having much beefier HW) performance wise. As for the lifetime costs, making money has always been and still is a critical issue with TiVo. If you are a long time subscriber with lifetime, you can probably get 'em to move it or swing you a discount.

__________________
Tivo Roamio and Tivo Mini - woot!
Tivo Premiere - probably to be replaced by another Mini
Series 3 - On the way out the door
Tivo HD - On the way out the door

Well yes -- and no -- and there are hundreds of threads here to prove it!

But I see you've actually asked some very good questions. I can't give you much in the way of answers, since all I know about the Premiere is what I've read here. But a couple of comments:

1. TiVo device and subscription pricing is the ultimate example of confusing. You just need to look and read a lot to get a better picture. Seems to me I've seen specials recently where you could get the box free and pay $20/mo subscription if that interests you.

2. There was quite a bit of complaining that the Premiere OTA tuners were not as sensitive as those in the TiVo HD and S3. If you care about OTA, you might want to search the Premiere forum here on that topic.

I'm sure others will give you more complete answers.

__________________
"It must be swell to be so perfect and odor-free" -- Del Griffith

VideoReDo users: Try To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

pyTivo users: Try To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. and To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

HD menus lag for some. Mine are fine. It has gotten faster over time as TiVo has optimized their software (reminds me of my Xoom- jelly bean makes it like a whole new device).

Ads are there, but are not too bad. Similar to an S2, and in the same way you get used to them and can easily ignore.

MSD is still in play- so if you have an active lifetime unit you'll pay less (~400 I believe). You should be able to find outlets with older stock units that run more like 50-100, and a renewed unit is ~80 (and work great).

I just got a Premiere a month or so ago and I don't notice that the HD menus are particularly laggy. They don't seem any slower than my S3. I turned off the inset video in the upper left corner (except in the guide, where you can't turn it off); it didn't find it to be a useful addition and it had a weird interaction with playback of recordings. That may or may not have sped things up.

__________________
Mike Scott

"To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts." -- hookbill

__________________
"It must be swell to be so perfect and odor-free" -- Del Griffith

VideoReDo users: Try To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

pyTivo users: Try To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. and To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I've also heard that the interface is now saturated with ads? Is that right?

I'm also confused on the pricing. When I look at the upgrade offers all I see is the premier at $150 + lifetime at $500. That would mean they are asking $650 for the premiere. Is that the price for a version without ads? That seems ridiculously high.

Lifetime is $400 since you already have a Tivo. I'd suggest getting the XL4 if you're going to upgrade. I don't have one, but it has 4 tuners, so is at least twice as good as a regular Premiere.. (Unless you need OTA channels.. the XL4 does not do OTA.. the 'old' Premieres do.)

Saturated with ads? There is a bar thing along the top of the menu screens that has some ads, and there are sometimes ads that show up when you pause (but that happens on S3 & TivoHD too).. I don't have a Premiere/XL4 but use one regularly at a friend's house. (and am thinking of getting one.)

The performance of the HDUI is very much dependent on your network. It uses the TiVo servers for most everything, except actual scheduling and recording. If your local net is slow or access to the internet is slow, it will be sluggish.

The performance of the HDUI is very much dependent on your network. It uses the TiVo servers for most everything, except actual scheduling and recording. If your local net is slow or access to the internet is slow, it will be sluggish.

At my GFs house, with her 1.2Mb/s DSL connection, my two tuner Premiere is only slightly slower than at home with my FiOS 43Mb/s connection.

At my GFs house, with her 1.2Mb/s DSL connection, my two tuner Premiere is only slightly slower than at home with my FiOS 43Mb/s connection.

Max d/l speed is not the only factor that affects network performance. I have 12MB/s and all hardwired connections. Most of the time I don't have any problems but believe me, there are times when it does get sluggish.

Only if he maintains service on his other TiVo (or some other TiVo). If he cancels service on the old box and doesn't have another, the MSD on the new Premiere goes away.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattack

Saturated with ads? There is a bar thing along the top of the menu screens that has some ads, and there are sometimes ads that show up when you pause (but that happens on S3 & TivoHD too).

I rarely notice what's going on in that bar at the top and I've programmed my universal remote to send PAUSE+CLEAR to get rid of pause ads (it gets rid of the scrub bar as well but you can't have everything ).

I thought that there were sometimes ads at the bottom of folder menus but I examined some folders just now and didn't see any.

__________________
Mike Scott

"To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts." -- hookbill

Maybe I'm not looking for any problems, but my 3 new Premieres all run great. My only criticism if that they didn't build out all of the menu's in HD yet - so it looks like crap once you go a few levels deep in the menus.

The HD menus for me are snappy. Channel changes are definitely quicker than what I had previously.

I have sold old boxes that were the MSD. Why would you cancel lifetime on a box?

Note: the OP indicated their initial box is lifetime. You now seem to be asking a different question where someone purchases lifetime using MSD with a monthly box. I think that the answer is the same- lifetime is lifetime and many have sold their discounted boxes which keeps lifetime. But, I have not done that myself.